After tobacco is cured and dried, in the past it has typically been placed in loose form in sheets and transported to market. Prior to being sheeted, the tobacco is held within tobacco racks or large containers within bulk tobacco barns. In emptying the barns, the tobacco within the racks and containers are placed in the sheets and the sheets are tied up and loaded onto a truck that transports the sheeted tobacco to market. This basic method of handling cured and dried tobacco between the farm and the market has been used for approximately thirty to forty years. However, it has some serious drawbacks and disadvantages. First this system of handling and transporting cured and dried tobacco is very labor intensive. In addition, handling cured and dried tobacco in sheets results in significant losses due to the tobacco falling out of the sheets between the farm and a warehouse where the tobacco is sold. Finally, transportation costs are also a concern. Since the tobacco is not compressed or packed within the sheets, then it follows that the tobacco assumes a relatively large volume and that in turn means that transportation costs can be substantial.
In recent years, there has been a trend towards baling cured and dried tobacco. Tobacco balers are now being used at both farm and market sites. The loose leaf cured and dried tobacco is typically removed from racks and containers and fed into a baler. The baler compresses the tobacco into cubes and the cubes of compressed tobacco are tied with wire and finally ejected or removed from the baler.
There are a number of baler designs being used to bale tobacco. Essentially, all of the balers include a baling chamber and a reciprocating ram that moves back and forth through the baling chamber to compress the loose tobacco. However, the baling machines that are used today to bale tobacco have a number of drawbacks and disadvantages. Principally among the disadvantages is that these balers are difficult and time consuming to load. For example, a number of balers that are presently being used to bale cured and dried tobacco include fixed upright side walls that tend to extend to such a height that it is difficult for individuals to hand feed the tobacco into the baling chamber. Consequently loading the baler is slow and that in turn translates to an inefficient and costly baling operation.
Therefore, there has been and continues to be a need for a tobacco baling machine that is easy to load and which has the capacity to produce a relatively large output of tobacco bales.